My favourite Christmas film will probably forever be the old black-and-white version of A Christmas Carol. It's a family tradition to watch it together, but it's also the film that best encapsulates the cozy feeling of kindness that springs up during that season.

It's a very close toss-up between Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers for me. But while I do love the scores in those films, and The Girl In Byakkoya in particular makes its way regularly onto my playlist, I'm not as much of a soundtrack junkie as some friends I could name.

Tokyo Godfathers, in my opinion, is Kon's most human film. Even in Millennium Actress, which kills with how devastatingly real and quietly tragic its conflicts are, the main character's a bit of a cipher. Tokyo Godfathers is a far less lonely film, that treats its characters and their bonds with each other with sympathy and warmth that I don't find often in his other stories, much as I love them. Plus, you know, making an empathetic feature length animated film in Japan (where homelessness is possibly treated as even more shameful than elsewhere) about a teenage runaway, a chronic liar, and a trans woman takes nerve. So hats off to Kon for that.

And to answer your final question: yes, back when he died. I can only hope to be that poetic on my deathbed, and the whole hospital breakout reminded me of that scene in Big Fish.

I think I cried when I first read them. And when Isao Takahata's death was announced, though in that case I at least had a friend close at hand to supply me with tea and hot meals when I spontaneously burst into tears on her duvet while browsing the web.